Brad Mercer is a principal architect with the MITRE Corporation in San Diego, California. The MITRE Corporation is a Federally Funded Research and Development Corporation (FFRDC).

Mr. Mercer serves as architecture advisor to the Office of the Chief Engineer of the U.S. Navy’s Space and Naval Warfare Systems Center (SPAWAR) in San Diego. In this capacity he serves as primary or consulting architect on multiple U.S. Navy Service-Oriented Architecture and Net-Centricity initiatives. Mr. Mercer is currently assigned as principal architecture advisor to the U.S. Navy’s Consolidated Afloat Network and Enterprise Services (CANES) program. CANES is a $1.5B initiative to recapitalize the information infrastructure on board U.S. Navy ships and submarines.

Presentation
Thoughts on Architecting .. and How to Improve the Practice
Architecting is a key discipline in the successful development of systems to deliver capability. However, the key ideas behind this discipline are not well understood even among its practitioners.

Architecting is not just a branch of engineering - it is fundamentally different from engineering. Architecting is co-equal with engineering in determining success in systems development. This presentation begins with fundamental principles and develops a foundation for the practice of architecting. It finishes with real practices that are being applied by the presenter to major systems development in the U.S. Navy.

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